Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Short version: Yes, this album is good. No, it doesn't sound like any Yes album before. If you can adjust to its widely varying styles, ranging from intelligent 60s pop, 70s prog, 80 rock and techno-pop, and even ballads and blues, you'll find a wealth of music to enjoy in its own right. Yes, it's more laid back and less frantic than your Yes brain expects; this will cause much consternation at first (see negative reviews elsewhere), but the quality of the songs wins out in the end. It's more pop than rock, more vocal than instrumental, and way more spiritual than not. The new singer-songwriter Jon Davison is very talented and it is a must that you listen to his work with Glass Hammer to realize the full extent of his artistry in a properly unhinged progressive rock context. (Start with the album IF.) If initial sales are any indication, at least some people like what they are hearing. Heaven and Earth debuted at #20 in Britain, their first top twenty album since 1994 (Talk). In the US Billboard charts it debuted at #26, the highest chart position of any album since 1991 (Union). Long version: As one of the earliest reviews for Yes' new album Heaven and Earth stated, I should also confess straight up that Yes is my favorite band. The Beatles might seem an easier choice, and a cooler choice would be some new "art rock" obsession like Sigur Ros or Sufjan Stevens, but when it comes down to it, my psyche is too linked up to 70s Yes music for it to be much of a contest. A lot of this has to do with the timing of my spiritual awakening in 1976 (literally while listening to "To Be Over"), right near the end of progrock's run as the artsy college kids favorite band. As my brain scrambled to figure out what it meant to be a spiritual being after years of hostile cynicism, Yes seemed to me to be virtual gospel music already sitting in my lap in the form of album covers and tour programs immersed in art and philosophy. Open-ended and vague lyrics, emotional as heck, and drenched in the literature of the counterculture, they were everyone's favorite band to talk about. Correct that, PONDER about. As opposed to disposable fizzy pop, Yes seemed like the most elaborate organic smoothie in the world, with tastes from out of this world. It was like leaving the world of mainstream America and entering into the realm of some strange counterculture. For the record, I consider Tales From Topographic Oceans their masterpiece, but never flinched for a second when the more radio-friendly Tormato was released, deeming it a remarkable album with some of the best lyrics of their career. Even with attempts at commercial albums like UNION, 90125, and OPEN YOUR EYES, I still thought there were immense tunes sprinkled throughout. Fast forward something like 40 years, and in 2014 Yes has released an album that, though absolutely true to the spiritual thread that has run throughout most their career, has resulted in the wailing and gnashing of teeth like we have never heard before, or at least not since OPEN YOUR EYES came out in 1997 (or 90125 in 1983, or maybe even Topographic Oceans in 1974, you get the idea). Again, I have to confess that while I like most of the new album, the complaints have some merit, especially about the slow pace throughout. It mostly comes down to, as it does with all bands, style expectations. A band's style can be a template for their work, but it can also become an intellectual trap for both audience and band. But fans, who like that style, don't want to see it messed with, at least not this much. Yes is known for progressive rock-- more notes for your money, more harmonic elaboration for your money, more obscure imagery, more time changes, key changes, instruments, sounds, and even over-the-top visual things to look at on the album cover. This album turns that logic on its head, leaving the cognitive category in your brain called "Yes music" saying, "What the f*ck-- where's my dope?!" Cue scathing reviews. But hooooooold on, because you can always build more pathways to joy in your brain, if you give the album a chance to work its magic outside the context of your expectations. I learned this especially with OPEN YOUR EYES, an album that traumatized me at first with its plodding Def Leppard-type relentlessness, but now I consider an album of mostly quite good rocking anthems of Yes positivity! Enter 2014 and Heaven and Earth-- the mellowist, most pop album in their career, and it's understandable why they are getting a lot of savaging reviews for the album. I do stand apart from the diehard prog contigent on these matters-- I like complex music from prog to jazz to experimental, but I'm also happy sitting in a lotus posture listening blissfully to the twee ramblings of many a spiritually minded singer. A respectable progger doesn't do mellow, unless it's an abstract ambient album by Tangerine Dream or Eno. I, on the other hand, actually like John Denver and lot of obscure hippie folk music, so I'm hardly averse to spiritual mush. I know a lot of other Yes fans in my camp, but unfortunately many of them will sit out this album because lead singer and hippie fountainhead Jon Anderson is not on this album (fan loyalty and all). To be quite honest, I never realized how freakin' rockin' Jon Anderson could sing until I started listening to Jon Davison, their new vocalist-- a singer capable of absolutely beautiful and complex passages (especially check out his work with Glass Hammer). However, Davison is still a much softer singer overall. His lyrics and melodies are equally beautiful. There's a distinct healing quality about his work, and from the moment the first single "Believe Again" was released, his music has felt like a lifeline to hope. Add all this up and you have what is the most laid back and uplifting album the group has ever done. Tracks 1 through 7 rarely get beyond a trotting pace or even moderate intensity, and there's only one track after that-- far too late to regain the interest of most progrock fans. Why release an album like this, one that confounds all expectations? Your guess is as good as mine. Nevertheless, and I can only speak from my own tastes, I really like enough of what I hear on this album to give it a respectable thumbs up. When all is said and done, I'm glad the band has taken this gamble, as I am with all their albums that flopped with their rabidly prog fan base (UNION, OPEN YOUR EYES, even 90125 and BIG GENERATOR), if only because it gives them a break from writing to expectations and a chance to produce some odd and atypical gems, and there are many on this album. Now, for the track by track rundown. 1. Believe Again. (Howe/Davison). Eight minutes of bliss-- the best introduction to singer-songwriter Jon Davison we could have asked for. Very meditative, Moodly Blues-like mellow prog, blatantly spiritual lyrical themes, ghostly keyboards from Downes, an uplifting chorus, and a beautiful, climactic guitar solo by Howe at the end. And people are complaining? My only suggestion would have been to write a scorching intro for this song; something to wake up the poggers before you mainline them with the rest of the song's meditative trance. Still, a very strong album opener. 2. The Game (Squre/Davison/Johnson). Pure 1980s pop rock with requisite soaring guitar fills, similar to Journey, Big Country, U2, GTR, Asia, or whoever. The chorus is so catchy it STARTS the song and repeats five times in seven minutes, ten times if you consider that the melody repeats twice each time! A bit overkill, but I'm not going to lie, it has a charm, and you'll liable to have MTV video flashbacks of silly teenage angst while listening to it. (By the way, the missing line on the lyric sheet is "The love we gave along the way.") 3. Step Beyond (Howe/Davison). Very techno-popish: a fun and loopy synthesizer floats from speaker to speaker throughout, enchanting harmony vocals, an oddly syncopated chorus, and Davison's lyrical theme for the album continues-- take a step outside your limited understanding of your self into unbounded awareness. Don't ask me what the "beg steal rob run hide" bit is about though-- I can't figure that out at all. It's one of my favorite tracks, but a bit too poppish for many others I would guess. 4. To Ascend (Davison/White). This song has gotten some really scathing reviews. Me thinks some of the proggers have a thing against the spiritual heart. It's just a simple love ballad, but not to romance, instead to the healing power of spiritual awakening. How anyone could love a band that wrote "Wondrous Stories," "Soon," "Soft as a Dove," "Madrigal," and then not be able to appreciate this... you've lost me. So it's mushy-- most devotional music is. Jon Anderson spent most of his career getting scathing reviews for being obtuse and unintelligable, and now that Yes has a lyricist that is just as preoccupied with the spiritual impluse and a bit more direct, some fans accuse him of being a simplistic copycat. Better that they should hail a taxi for that ego and consider that great poets like William Blake wrote epics like "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" as well as simpler verse like "Spring." And Blake was attacked by critics as well, but look at how we revere him today. Simpler doesn't mean bad. A great writer should be able to uplift through the use of restraint as well. Davison has already handled complexity-- especially check out his work with progmasters Glass Hammer-- but "To Ascend" is like a letter from a friend at a bad time in your life, or your higher self talking to your dejected self, and it's angelically sung taboot. Let your love light shine in art, Mr. Davison! 5. In a World of Our Own (Davison/Squire). We've been arguing about this one-- is it a shuffle? Blues? Jazz? Let me know in the comments section below. It reminds me of the Edgar Winter Group's "Easy Street." Kinda prog pop, this was the hardest song for me to get into, but the Beach Boys harmonies finally hooked me. All the album's backing vocals are mixed by Yes alumnus Billy Sherwood, and it turns out they are a highlight of the album, but that's quite an adjustment for a band known primarily for blazing instrumental work which is deemphasized on this offering. 6. Light of the Ages (Davison). This song definitely should have been progged up a bit more. Another mellow, heartfelt, gorgeous mini epic by new vocalist Davison, but when it fades out you are just crying that no one wrote a final instrumental section for it. What were they thinking, or rather, not thinking? But there's no doubt that Davison's songwriting is superb throughout, and it's another new agey lyrical theme that holds this album together. 7. It Was All We Knew (Howe). Another oddball pop contribution that I love. Of course, on the last album Howe also granted us with a gem-- "Hour of Need"-- which he beautifully sang with Benoit David. On this album he turns nostalgic with a breezy melody and a wistful reminiscence of youth (or is that just me putting my own psychological spin on it?), and its matched with an equally beautiful delivery by Davison. And I love that short but jazzy guitar solo-- when was the last time you heard something that tasty on a pop song? Is there no end to Howe's talent? Again, a Beach Boys influence is felt, or is it just the melancholy reference to "summer days...it was all we knew" that evokes mid 1960s feelings? It flashes me back to my youth on summer vacations by the pool. I've always felt Steve was a great songwriter ever since he surprised us with his first solo album, Beginnings, in 1975. It wasn't the nonstop blazing guitar solos that we expected, but instead showcased his poetic songwriting. This terrific track reaffirms my appreciation of his intimate way with a lyric. 8. Subway Walls (Davison/Downes). This is the only traditionally progish song on the album, but there's almost a late 60s/ early 70s hard rock feel to it (think "Green-Eyed Lad" by Sugarloaf). Nine minutes of pure fun: first class arrangement and Hammond solo by Downes, Howe's best guitar solo yet, quirky rifts and time changes, and a climactic buildup with Davison's finest lyrics which are very reminiscent of The Bhagavad Gita, which he's probably read since the liner notes say he's into Paramahansa Yogananda (of Topographic Oceans fame): "Brave the battle that's before you... transcend!" Yes, indeed. Oh yeah, it's the jackpot, the paydirt, the bullseye you were waiting for, but it kind of makes you scratch your head wondering why they didn't try to come up with another song like this for the album. Well, there you have it. It's not the be-all and end-all of Yes albums (I gave it 4 out of 5 stars) but it's certainly not even remotely crap either. It's a very uplifting and spiritual contribution to their catalogue, has a lot of styles you never thought you'd hear on a Yes album (which is a good thing in my opinion), and I think Jon Davison should be happy to have spearheaded the effort. As I write, rumors are swirling of a possible Yes reunion with Jon Anderson, at least for a few shows. My attitude is that there is nothing about Yes' ever-shifting lineups that surprises me anymore. And there's nothing bad that can come after this album. Davison has been exposed to an international audience which in turn has discovered his previous prog band, Glass Hammer, who are creating albums left and right that stand easily beside many of our 70s favorites. Whether Yes stays together in this configuration or not, it seems like a win-win-win-win situation: either we'll get an even better album from this lineup, or they'll make one with Anderson which will be predictably good, or we'll get another astounding Glass Hammer album with Davison, or some other brilliant group of musicans will snatch him up. In any case, I look forward to hearing the next twenty years of his music career unfold, and putting this CD into a folder of Yes music on my iPod set to shuffle! Yes music-- it's all a state of mind. Enjoy.